Agonistic Democracy

Rethinking Political Institutions in Pluralist Times

Marie Paxton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429756870
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Agonistic Democracy explores how theoretical concepts from agonistic democracy can inform institutional design in order to mediate conflict in multicultural, pluralist societies.

Drawing on the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Arendt, Marie Paxton outlines the importance of their themes of public contestation, contingency and necessary interdependency for contemporary agonistic thinkers. Paxton then delineates three distinct approaches to agonistic democracy: David Owen's perfectionist agonism, Mouffe's adversarial agonism and William Connolly and James Tully's inclusive agonism. She demonstrates how each is fundamental to enabling citizens to cultivate better virtues for themselves and society (Owen), motivating democratic engagement (Mouffe) and enhancing relations of respect and understanding between conflicting citizens (Connolly and Tully). Situated within the context of a deeply polarised post-Trump America and post-Brexit Britain, this book reveals the need to rethink our approach to conflict mediation through democratic institutions. Pulling together insights from experimental research with deliberative democratic innovations, Paxton explores how agonistic theory might be institutionalised further.

By discussing ways in which agonistic institutions might be developed to render democracy more virtuous, more engaging, and more inclusive, this book provides a unique resource for students of contemporary political theory.

Part I

Theory

1 The Theoretical Roots of Agonistic Democracy

The field of agonistic democracy has been highly influenced by the work of several thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt, amongst others. This chapter explores how their thought has impacted the theory of agonistic democracy. Whilst these thinkers can neither fully encapsulate nor represent all of those who have contributed to agonist thought, they are particularly relevant due to their significant influence on the ideas of David Owen, Chantal Mouffe, William Connolly and James Tully. They are also particularly useful to this book’s concerns with institutionalisation since their accounts are not only philosophical, but also political in nature. I suggest that three principal themes both resonate throughout the work of the thinkers, and are employed (albeit differently) by each of the four contemporary agonists: the political contestation of conflicting values, the contingent nature of politics and the necessary interdependency of citizens. They are useful in both bringing together and highlighting the differences between both the earlier thinkers and their contemporary agonists. They are also crucial in promoting a more virtuous, engaging and inclusive society, something which Chapter 2 explores. In order to fully understand the three distinct agonistic approaches in Chapter 2, it is important to use this chapter to demonstrate the various ways in which Nietzsche, Foucault, Arendt and Schmitt understand and promote such goods. Additionally, this chapter establishes links between their accounts and the concepts used in the fields of both agonistic democracy and new institutionalism. This is essential to demonstrating the compatibility of agonistic thought with certain types of institutions. Finally, and of considerable significance to subsequent discussions about institutions, this chapter explores the ways in which Schmitt’s work is something of an outlier, as is Mouffe’s subsequent approach (something Chapter 2 explores further). The way in which Schmitt and Mouffe sit less comfortably with the other thinkers raises some fundamental questions, which are crucial in thinking through institutional design in later chapters.

The Political Contestation of Conflicting Values

The notion of political contestation is evident throughout the work of the four thinkers. This concept resonates with Mark Wenman’s discussions about the tragic vision of both the earlier thinkers and the contemporaries, in which ‘conflict, suffering, and strife are endemic in social and political life and not a temporary condition on a journey towards reconciliation or redemption’ (Wenman 2013, 35). The first part of recognising such conflict involves calls for a revival of the ‘political’. This is highlighted by the shared emphasis that Schmitt and Foucault place on merging politics and society, and blurring the boundaries between philosophy and politics. The second component is the promotion of contestation through a more situated, citizen-centred and participatory account of politics, in which individuals can become citizens rather than subjects. For many thinkers (however, not for Schmitt), this is supplemented by emphasis on contestation as a public practice. Contestation is perceived as a tool to render politics meaningful, prevent hegemony, expose domination, enhance individual autonomy and better society. On this account, we must consider how to provide democratic spaces which both enable and encourage a more active and participatory role for citizens. This could lead to more virtuous citizens and society, return substance to democracy and enhance democracy’s potential for more diverse inclusion.

The Revival of the Political

Politics as a political practice constitutes the first part of political contestation, the first of three themes which unite thinkers associated with agonistic democracy. For Schmitt and Foucault, the emphasis on reviving the political derives from the liberal public/private separation and their respective critiques of it. Liberal democratic theory has tended to rely on a division between the public and private spheres to mediate the value conflict which arises from deep disagreements between citizens living in pluralist societies. One such example is Rawls’ overlapping consensus, which requires citizens to leave behind their ‘comprehensive doctrines’ (for example, the religious or partisan foundations of their beliefs) when engaging with conflicting others (Rawls 1993). This seeks to prevent one side from offering reasons that the other side could never agree with (or, at least, not before converting to another religion or political allegiance), and therefore mediate conflict by finding some centre ground. An example of this is the method of deliberation and decision-making employed by the US Supreme Court (amongst other judicial institutions). Justices aspire to keep their own religious, political and/or personal beliefs out of their reasoning, and instead provide neutral arguments which are not reliant upon a particular religious or partisan affiliation. However, Schmitt and Foucault reject the possibility of such strict separation between public and private. In this case, for instance, we might call into question the capacity of justices and judges to ever truly reach a neutral stance which is in no way guided by religious, political and/or personal opinion. Instead, Schmitt (2008, 23) states that democracy ought to abandon ‘the nineteenth-century antitheses and divisions pertaining to the state-society (= political against social) contrast’. He explains that the attempt to truly separate the two spheres is flawed in itself: ‘[Liberalism] like any other significant human movement … has failed to elude the political’ (ibid., 69). This notion is echoed by Mouffe’s contemporary account of agonism, which draws heavily on Schmitt’s political thought. Providing abortion as an example, she argues that value conflicts will inevitably straddle the ever-shifting divide between public and private:

As current controversies about abortion clearly show, pluralism does not mean that all those conflicting conceptions of the good will coexist peacefully without trying to intervene in the public sphere, and the frontier between public and private is not given once and for all but constructed and constantly shifting.

(Mouffe 1993, 51)

Thus, institutional design ought to reflect this shifting boundary, and allow political questions to reflect their often personal and moral nature. Schmitt explains how this strict divide between the political and the social leads to attempts to make decisions through universal or rational norms on the one hand, or by turning to allegedly neutral arbiters, on the other. Yet, he rejects such attempts, proposing a situated, citizen-centred and ‘political’ account of politics:

[Conflicts] can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party. Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict.

(Schmitt 2008, 27)

The need for citizens to assess the particular situation is clear when we look to Mouffe’s example of abortion. A shared commitment to the general norms of rights, for instance, cannot tell citizens whether to prioritise the mother’s right to choose, or the foetus’s right to life. Any attempt to do so would certainly not constitute a neutral arbiter. Thus, citizens need to make their own decisions about situations within their specific context. This proposal for a situated, citizen-centred account of politics is echoed in Mouffe’s work (1993), which calls for a ‘return of the political’, and must be reflected in suggestions for agonistic institutionalisation.

For Schmitt, not only is this divide unattainable, it is also deeply damaging for the meaning of politics. He claims that attempts to separate the two spheres involves ‘subjugating state and politics, partially into an individualistic domain of private law and morality, partially into economic notions’ (2008, 72). As a result of attempts to divide politics into various arenas, Schmitt argues that it become meaningless and void of substance (ibid., 72). Influenced by Schmitt’s work, Mouffe (2000, 1) echoes this concern, stating that ‘it is indeed the political which is at stake here, and the possibility of its elimination’. The issue, then, is how to motivate citizens to engage in democratic politics when all questions of substance have been removed from the agenda. Mouffe links this concern to the surge in popularity of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election campaign. She discusses how citizens looked to these political outsiders to provide an alternative to the empty politics of the establishment (Mouffe in Waleed 2016). This argument is expanded upon in For a Left Populism, where she explains the success of right-wing populist parties through their provision – albeit a false provision – of ‘an alternative that gave back to the people the voice that had been confiscated by the establishment elites’ (Mouffe 2018, 4–5). Employing a neutral or apolitical approach to politics, then – or relying on political parties and candidates who are much the same – does not necessarily eradicate conflict, but can actually aggravate democratic apathy and disaffection. As such, citizens might turn to non-democratic outlets for their political expression; a danger which we will consider more fully in Chapter 2. Thus, to prevent democratic apathy – and, worse still, democratic disaffection – political institutions ought to revitalise democracy through discussions about values and morals, and not simply reduce important political questions to costs and taxes. For instance, questions about Brexit in the UK and immigration in the US should directly engage with the value conflicts to which they give rise, rather than confining discussions to the monetary effects on individuals and businesses. Institutions which focus on the values and morality intrinsic to politics could also help to restore civility to our political discussions (as the section on necessary interdependency explores further).

Foucault also rejects this separation between politics and society; however, for him, this is less about reviving the political sphere, and more about reflecting the pervasive nature of power. He argues that ‘relations of power, and hence the analysis that must be made of them, necessarily extend beyond the limits of the state’ (Foucault and Rabinow 1984, 64). As a result of this, politics and society are inseparable from one another since state power is entangled in power struggles inherent in ‘the body, sexuality, the family, kinship, knowledge, technology, and so forth’ (ibid., 64). Thus, we cannot fully understand, or challenge, the power relations in institutions without addressing those which flow above and beyond the state. Connolly’s agonism draws on Foucauldian discussions of state and society, affirming that ‘the expansion of diversity in one domain ventilates life in others as well’ (Connolly 2005, 6). An example of this is gender inequality in political representation: how can we tackle this if we do not simultaneously challenge the dominance of men in the home, the school, the workplace and the media? If females are both underrepresented and less vocal in their political science classes (and they often are), then how can we expect them to be represented equally and have their voices heard in electoral politics? This is of considerable importance for thinking through agonistic institutions: any such account must bridge the gap between formal spaces of politics, and informal – and sometimes hidden – relations of power. Both Schmitt and Foucault then – followed by Mouffe and Connolly respectively – refute attempts to neatly separate state and society. Instead, they promote more situated, citizen-centred accounts of politics, which seek to restore the ‘political’ element to politics. Politics is necessarily political in the sense that it does not, and cannot, exist only in government institutions, nor can it only involve the neutral consultation of abstract, universal principles. According to Foucault and Schmitt, these two spheres necessarily overlap, thus politics must be a situated, citizen-centred and political practice, which transcends traditional formal political spaces.

As will be discussed in depth in Chapter 3, this emphasis on rejecting and renegotiating the dichotomy between state and society resonates with new institutionalist critiques of classical institutionalism. As Vivien Lowndes (2002, 62) asserts, ‘the focus was upon formal rules and organizations rather than informal conventions; and upon official structures of government rather than broader institutional constraints on governance (outside as well as within the state)’. Yet, just as Schmitt and Foucault – and subsequently Mouffe and Connolly – encourage us to see politics as transcending state institutions, so too do new institutionalists. Their focus does not simply include government and the formal institutions associated with it, but also includes societal relations of governance and informal codes of conduct: in essence, anything which shapes and constrains the behaviour of actors (Lowndes 2002, 67). This echoes Schmitt and Foucault’s critique of liberal politics as instituting a false public-private divide. As Mark Bevir (1999, 353) puts it, ‘Foucault’s study of governmentality is a decentred one’. By proposing more situated, citizen-centred and political institutions, democracy can become more substantial (and therefore more engaging) and better able to challenge power relations (and therefore become more inclusive).

For Arendt, the emphasis on politics as a political activity through which citizens engage with one another is significant to her understanding of identity. She states that, ‘the public-political realm … [is where] … men attain their full humanity, their full reality as men, not only because they are (as in the privacy of the household) but also because they appear’ (Arendt 2013, 171). For her, one’s citizenship is dependent on engagement with others; thus, her account of the political is also necessarily public. A we see in Chapter 2, Tully (1999, 171) echoes this, explaining that ‘when these activities are unavailable or arbitrarily restricted, the members of a political association remain “subjects” rather than “citizens” because power is exercised over them without their say, non-democratically’. Thus, a citizen-centred account of politics is fundamental to enabling citizens to attain their full freedom, autonomy and achieve their full capabilities.

Nietzsche (2006, 97) also promotes the public realm in Homer’s Contest where he demonstrates how Ancient Greek competition enhanced people’s capacities. However, when discussing the ‘public’ component of Nietzsche’s account, it is important to note that this is limited. For instance, Nietzsche (1998, 6) prioritises the Overman (a non-conformist, who challenges norms and values and realises himself), over the herd (who unquestioningly follow their community). Unlike Foucault and Arendt, then, who promote an inclusive account of public politics, Nietzsche’s public sphere is restricted to particular individuals. This is important for Owen’s work, which is significantly influenced by Nietzsche’s thought. His agonistic account is distinct from the other three thinkers because of its focus on the ends of politics, rather than just the process. This reflects Nietzsche’s emphasis on contestation as a tool to improving society. Drawing on this, Owen (2002, 126) claims that ‘citizens strive to develop their capacities for self-rule in competition with one another’. Resonating with Nietzsche’s valorisation of Ancient Greek competition, Owen promotes a public sphere of politics in which one reaches new virtues by contesting the values of other members of one’s community. Thus, whereas Schmitt advocates contest because of its ability to revive the political nature of politics, for Arendt (and Tully) and for Nietzsche (and Owen), political contestation allows citizens to enhance their capabilities. Yet, unlike Arendt, Nietzsche’s public sphere constitutes a narrower definition, prioritising those who are able to challenge current norms and values. Such tension between inclusion on one hand, and better outcomes on the other, is important for the discussion of institutions. It reflects a more general tension that we see in democratic societies between the promotion of equality (reflected through one person, one vote) and the search for the best outcome (reflected through an informed and educated decision). The conflict between the two is evident in calls for a second referendum on Brexit whereby the original referendum provided the opportunity for equality of voice, but has been widely criticised for failing to adequately inform citizens. Whilst agonistic accounts steer clear of reason and rationality as a means to forming an educated and informed decision, they (Owen’s perfectionist account, in particular) do place emphasis on the importance of contestation as a tool to more virtuous decision-making.

It is important to note, here, that whilst both Arendt and Schmitt evidently echo Foucault and Nietzsche’s calls for political accounts of politics, they do so in a different manner. Whereas the latter thinkers understand politics as entangled in power relations – and therefore present wherever there is power – for Arendt, politics is a rare moment in which ‘it bursts into the context of predictable processes as something unexpected, unpredictable, and ultimately causally inexplicable – just like a miracle’ (Arendt and Kohn 2005, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Why Agonistic Democracy?
• PART I: Theory
• PART II: Institutions
• Index